Bulat Okudzhava
Bulat Okudzhava | |
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Author song | |
Occupation(s) | Musician, poet, editor, novelist, short story writer |
Instrument(s) | Vocals, guitar |
Years active | 1950s–1997 |
Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava (Russian: Булат Шалвович Окуджава;
Life
Bulat Okudzhava was born in Moscow on May 9, 1924, into a family of communists who had come from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, to study and to work for the Communist Party. The son of a Georgian father, Shalva Okudzhava, and an Armenian mother, Ashkhen Nalbandyan, Bulat Okudzhava spoke and wrote only in Russian.
Okudzhava's mother was the niece of a well-known Armenian poet,
Terror and war
In 1941, at the age of 17, one year before his scheduled school graduation, Bulat Okudzhava volunteered for the
Return to Moscow
In 1956, three years after the death of Joseph Stalin, Okudzhava returned to Moscow. Following his parents' rehabilitation and the 20th Party Congress at which Khrushchev denounced Stalin, Bulat Okudzhava was able to join the Communist Party, of which he remained a member until 1990. In the Soviet capital he worked first as an editor in the publishing house Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard), and later as the head of the poetry division at the most prominent national literary weekly in the former USSR, Literaturnaya Gazeta ("Literary Newspaper"). It was then, in the middle of the 1950s, that he began to compose songs and to perform them, accompanying himself on a Russian guitar.
Soon he was giving concerts. He only employed a few chords and had no formal training in music, but he possessed an exceptional melodic gift, and the intelligent lyrics of his songs blended perfectly with his music and his voice.[citation needed] His songs were praised by his friends, and amateur recordings were made. These unofficial recordings were widely copied as magnitizdat, and spread across the USSR and Poland, where other young people picked up guitars and started singing the songs for themselves. In 1969, his lyrics appeared in the classic Soviet film White Sun of the Desert.
Georgian Song (1967) | |
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Bulat Okudzhava singing | |
Georgian Song on YouTube |
Songwriter, poet and novelist
Though Okudzhava's songs were not published by any official media organization until the late 1970s, they quickly achieved enormous popularity, especially among the intelligentsia – mainly in the USSR at first, but soon among Russian-speakers in other countries as well.[citation needed] Vladimir Nabokov, for example, cited his Sentimental March in the novel Ada or Ardor.
Okudzhava, however, regarded himself primarily as a poet and claimed that his musical recordings were insignificant. During the 1980s, he also published a great deal of prose (his novel The Show is Over won him the
Okudzhava died in Paris on June 12, 1997, and is buried in the
A
When, like a beast, the snow storm roars,
when, in a rage, it howls,
You do not have to lock the doors,
of your residing house.
When on a lasting trip you go
the road is hard, supposing,
you ought to open wide your door;
leave it unlocked, don't close it.
As you leave home one quiet night,
decide, don't pause a minute:
mix up the burning pinewood light
with that of human spirit.
I wish the house you live in,
were always warm and faultless.
A closed door isn't worth a thing,
a lock is just as worthless.
Trans. by Alec Vagapov, The song of the open door on
Music
Okudzhava, like most bards, did not come from a musical background. He learned basic guitar skills with the help of some friends. He also knew how to play basic chords on a piano.
Okudzhava tuned his
Initially Okudzhava was taught three basic chords, and towards the end of his life he claimed to know a total of seven.
Many of Okudzhava's songs are in the key of C minor (with downtuning B flat or A minor), centering on the C minor chord (X00X011, thickest to thinnest string), then progressing to a G 7 (00X0433), then either an E-flat minor (X55X566) or C major (55X5555). In addition to the aforementioned chords, the E-flat major chord (X55X567) was often featured in songs in a major key, usually C major (with downtuning B-flat or A major).
By the nineties, Okudzhava adopted the increasingly popular six string guitar but retained the Russian tuning, subtracting the fourth string, which was convenient to his style of playing.
Fiction in English translation
- "The Art of Needles and Sins", (story), from The New Soviet Fiction, Abbeville Press, NY, 1989.
- "Good-bye, Schoolboy!" and "Promoxys", (stories), from Fifty Years of Russian Prose, Volume 2, M.I.T Press, MA, 1971.
- The Extraordinary Adventures of Secret Agent Shipov in Pursuit of Count Leo Tolstoy, in the year 1862, (novel), Abelard-Schuman, UK, 1973.
- Nocturne: From the Notes of Lt. Amiran Amilakhvari, Retired, (novel), Harper and Row, NY, 1978.
- A Taste of Liberty, (novel), Ardis Publishers, 1986.
- "Girl of My Dreams", (story), from 50 Writers: An Anthology of 20th Century Russian Short Stories, Academic Studies Press, 2011.
Selected discography
- Wonderful waltz, 1969
- While the world is still turning, 1994
- And when the first love comes... (А как первая любовь), 1997
- Piosenki (Songs), Polish edition, 2000
- Green lantern, On Smolensk road, Main song, Record on stone, and Your Honor – records made during last years of his life
Selected filmography
Year | Title | Original title | ||
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Lyrics | Other | |||
1961 | My Friend, Kolka! | Друг мой, Колька! | Merry Drummer; Over Sea, Over Land | |
1962 | Chain reaction | Цепная реакция | Last Trolleybus; Old Pier | actor (bus passenger) |
1964 | I Am Twenty | Мне двадцать лет | Sentimental March | cameo (as himself) |
1965 | Faithfulness | Верность | screenplay | |
1966 | July Rain | Июльский дождь | A Song About Infantry | music |
1967 | Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha | Женя, Женечка и «катюша» | Danish King's Elixir | screenplay, vocal, cameo (soldier) |
1970 | White Sun of the Desert | Белое солнце пустыни | Your Honor, Lady Luck | |
Belorussian Station | Белорусский вокзал | We Need Only One Victory | music | |
1974 | The Straw Hat | Соломенная шляпка | all songs | |
1975 | The Captivating Star of Happiness
|
Звезда пленительного счастья | romances | cameo (bandmaster) |
The Adventures of Buratino
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Приключения Буратино | Lamplighters; Papa Carlo; Karabas Barabas (two songs); About Greed-Guts; The Field of Wonders; Pierrot's Serenade | ||
1976 | The Key That Should Not Be Handed On | Ключ без права передачи | Let's Exclaim | cameo (as himself) |
The Strogovs | Строговы | actor (officer) | ||
1977 | One-Two, Soldiers Were Going... | Аты-баты, шли солдаты... | Take the Greatcoat, Let's Go Home | |
1979 | The Wife Has Left | Жена ушла | One More Romance | vocal |
1982 | The Pokrovsky Gate | Покровские ворота | Sentries of Love; Painters; Ditty About Arbat | vocal |
1984 | Dear, Dearest, Beloved, Unique... | Милый, дорогой, любимый, единственный... | One Wishes to Get Rich | vocal |
1985 | Legal Marriage | Законный брак | This Woman in the Window; The Skies are Freer After the Rain | actor (train passenger) |
1986 | Guard Me, My Talisman | Храни меня, мой талисман | One Can't Return the Past; Family Photo Against Pushkin | cameo (as himself) |
2000 | Still Waters | Тихие омуты | Youth Ends Quickly | music |
2005 | The Turkish Gambit | Турецкий гамбит | Autumn Rain |
References
- ^ Smith, G. S. (1988). "Okudzhava Marches On". Slavonic and East European Review. 66.4 (October 1): 553.
- ISBN 978-5-94663-332-1
- ^ List of Passengers That Crossed Germany During the War Archived 2019-03-01 at the Wayback Machine published by Vladimir Burtsev on October, 1917 (in Russian)
- ISBN 978-5-235-03255-2
- ^ Писатели требуют от правительства решительных действий. Izvestia (in Russian). October 5, 1993. Archived from the original on July 16, 2011. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
- ^ Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – p.260
- ^ Sentries of Love, Bulat Okudzhava's songs by Tatiana and Sergei Nikitin
- ^ Songs of Bulat Okudzhava by Galina Khomchik
- ^ Songs of Bulat Okudzhava by Zhanna Bichevskaya
- ^ Blue balloon, song and music by Bulat Okudzhava, performed by Elena Frolova
External links
- English translations by M. Tubinshlak
- Audio files of his most famous songs in MP3 format
- Biography (www.russia-in-us.com)
- Biography (www.russia-ic.com)
- English translations by Alec Vagapov (55 songs)
- Russian poets of the 1960s
- English translations by Yevgeny Bonver (24 songs)
- (in English and Russian) English translations by Maya Jouravel (3 songs)
- (in English and Russian) The song of an open door
- (in English and Russian) On Volodya Vysotsky
- Okudzhava's short story Unexpected Joy
- (in Russian) Song Lyrics (100+ songs)
- (in Russian) Bulat Okudzhava – video
- (in Russian) Rare photos of Bulat Okudzhava by Mihail Pazij Archived 2011-05-21 at the Wayback Machine